Thank You President Obama For 1 Million New DREAMs

Posted by Taylor Dankmyer on June 15, 2012

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Wow. What an incredible day for all Americans.

Early this morning Time Magazine released their June 15th issue, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, of Define American,  along with several dozen other immigrants who have outed themselves as undocumented, on the cover of every print edition in the world.

Just a few hours later, President Obama announced that his administration will stop deporting, and begin granting work permits, to younger undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives.

What does it mean? It means almost one million young people, who have been educated here, worked here, and have so much potential to give to this country, will have the papers to demonstrate what they’ve said all along: “We Are Americans.”

We’ve been honored to work with Jose and Define American over the last year. The hundreds of stories that people shared through Define American inspired us. Stories from people like Mandeep, who was voted most likely to save the world in her high school class, and also are at risk of being deported. Or Victor, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 6, and wants to be a history teacher. To celebrities like Stephen Colbert and Russell Simmons.  

With Jose’s leadership and courage, alongside the courage of 100's of DREAMers, we have been incredibly inspired in the effort to reveal what it really means to be American.  

We hope that you will join us in thanking President Obama for his announcement Friday by signing this Thank You note on Change.org. Thank President Obama for having the courage to do the right thing and take bold action to allow a million new Americans to finally dream of the future they have been looking for.

While this is a great step in the right direction, as Jose said in his blog post today, “The journey is far from over for the remaining millions of undocumented Americans like me--at 31, I am past the age limit--but this is a big, bold and necessary step in the road to citizenship.”  We hope you will continue to work with us as we continue the effort for comprehensive immigration reform.

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